A case of adult T-cell leukemia/lymphoma (ATLL) with angiocentric and angiodestructive features.

This report describes a case of adult T-cell leukemia/lymphoma (ATLL) with angiocentric and angiodestructive features. The patient was a 66-year-old Japanese woman who began developing widespread skin lesions ten months prior to admission. The diagnosis of ATLL was made on the basis of her having an antibody to human T-cell lymphotropic virus type-1 (HTLV-1) and typical flower cells (ATLL cells) in peripheral blood smears. Once hospitalized, the course of her disease was very acute and severe, as is seen with angiocentric lymphoma. Based on histological features, this case was judged not to be angiocentric lymphoma; however, it may lie within the spectrum of angiocentric immunoproliferative lesions (AIL). The findings in this case strongly suggest that HTLV-1 can be a pathogenic factor in the expression of angiocentric and angiodestructive features in ATLL, as is Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) (1-4). To our knowledge the present case is the sixth reported in the literature of lymphoma in which these features are associated with HTLV-1 infection (5-7).